"An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
for every tatter in its mortal dress,"
W.B.Yeats
Way back in 1973 I spent eight weeks in an orthopaedic ward recovering
from a badly broken leg. In the bed opposite me was a man who had just
lost his dominant leg in a motor bike accident. We arrived in hospital at
the same time and first met, so to speak, across the gulf of an old style
''nightingale ward' as each of us was confined to our respective beds; I by
the tether of being in traction, he by the pain and trauma of his recent
amputation.
Within days he was up and about, driving the nursing staff crazy with his
refusal to confine himself to the rate of progress they deemed safe. He set
the tone of his stay by climbing out of bed before he was even issued with
crutches, and hoping over to my bed where he proceeded to scratch my
extremely itchy, but by me unreachable, toes. Nurses arrived in droves and
escorted him back to his bed with instructions that he remain there until
the physio had issued him crutches and taught him how to use them. He
smiled, thanked them for their help, made no promises, and promptly set of
on a visit to another patient as soon as their backs were turned.
Over the ensuing weeks I watched him regain his control of his body and his
world. He was always at least one step ahead of his rehabilitation program
and eventually as he tested his limits, way past anything his exasperated
physiotherapist had planned. 25 years later I have a clear recollection of
him
hopping from the ground to the seat of a park bench and balancing there a
moment, his crutches held out like wings drying in the sun, before hopping
over the back of the seat back to ground level. I can't recall this man's
face or name, but he has become a central icon in my life. From him I
learned that healing is not the process by which our bodies 'get better', it
is the process by which we become better people. Nothing could replace his
leg so he learnt to do without it. He taught me that we don't have to have
to have a whole body to be a whole person, that human beings are greater
than the sum of their parts.
We too are amputees. The missing part of our bodies lies deep within our
brains. The means by which it was removed is not known but it is as absent
as my long ago friend's leg was. It is never going to spontaneously grow
back, indeed the process of atrophy continues. To use Yeats' imagery our
coat becomes daily more tattered. And to continue Yeats' imagery, the worse
it gets the more we need our soul to clap its hands and sing.
It will not cure us but it will keep us whole.
Dennis
